


he was the ocean and I was the sand

by firstaudrina



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, anti jordan kyle, domestic abuse, post 3x08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 05:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14664149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: What Maia does while she’s away. Post 3x08, “A Heart of Darkness.”





	he was the ocean and I was the sand

**Author's Note:**

> This was just going to be a lil 1k ficlet to fill in the gaps but apparently I never run out of things to say about Maia. She and Simon have a talk they should have had a while ago.

Maia used to run in high school. There’s a joke in there somewhere. 

She would wake up long before the sun rose, the moon still imprinted on the denim sky. The house was silent except for the rustling of sleeping residents. Maia got dressed quietly, tied her hair back, and swung herself out her bedroom window so she could shimmy down the tree to the dew-wet grass. She never went out the front door. She didn’t want anyone to hear her. She could be weirdly secretive about meaningless things like that, guarded over nothing. She would do two miles before climbing back into her bedroom like she’d never left. 

She joined the track team, too. Her mom wanted her to do ballet but Maia wasn’t a ballet girl, she didn’t crave that kind of delicacy and control. She wanted soles pounding the pavement. She wanted that single-minded speed, bolting breathless like a bullet through the suburban streets of her neighborhood. It was something she wouldn’t budge on. She could only do so much. She’d put on the soft sweaters and flowy little dresses her mom bought her, she’d wear her hair long, she’d nod along when Mom said she looked so much better in bright colors, whatever. She could do that much. She could play dress up. 

Running wasn’t something Maia kept up with after she moved to the city. She was too busy, and wolfing out was pretty much the best total-body workout around. Running away from home was her last hurrah, but she breaks out her sneakers almost as soon as she gets to the motel. 

After saying goodbye to Simon, Maia takes the Chinatown bus to Boston and then transfers to another line that will take her out towards October Mountain State Forest. It takes so long she finishes an entire audiobook, the quiet clip of someone else’s voice in her head keeping her thoughts from drowning her. She gets a room at a crappy roadside inn, just somewhere to keep her shit while she loses what’s left of it amongst the trees. 

She gets the lay of the land on her run and then stocks up on supplies; she prepares. She gets a first aid kid for any scrapes she might get out there in the wilderness, then fills the fridge with meat, all kinds, she’s not picky. Cow and veal and goat. After her transformation she’ll eat it raw with her fingers. It’s not something she does very often, but the body needs different things at times like these. She can feel how hungry the wolf is as it stretches along her muscles and tendons, fills her up on the inside until it’s pressing at the barrier of her skin. Not yet. Not yet.

She gets a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos too. There’s still a human girl in there somewhere.

Maia left her school books behind in her apartment, but she brings two novels with her: this incredibly tacky romance novel from the eighties called _The Time of the Hunter’s Moon_ that Simon found for her in a used bookstore in the East Village, and a collection of Greek mythology. She’s been reading about the Erinyes lately. It’s satisfying.

But she picks the romance novel when she goes out to sit on the balcony, her jeans unbuttoned so fur can ripple up over her stomach. Her nails are already claws but she holds back, for now. She can sense the quiet woods thrumming with early spring, calling her. Not yet.

The book is a hardcover with a crumbling paper jacket and someone else’s highlighter aggressively marking up the pages. It’s about a girl named Cordelia who has to choose between two men, one good and one bad but dangerously appealing. Of course it is.

Maia reads until the sun goes down, then walks to the edge of the woods, takes off her clothes, and runs. 

 

 

 

Maia drags her body into the motel bed at dawn, the cheap blanket scratchy against too-tender skin. There are scratches on her palms and the soles of her feet, bruises at her hips and shoulders. There are leaves in her hair. But for the first time since Jordan reappeared in her life, she sleeps without interruption and does not dream.

When she wakes up she’s buzzing with adrenaline. Hoping that her mind will rest if her body is tired enough, she does push-ups, sit-ups, high-knees. Every inch of her aches from stalking through the trees all night, chasing deer and rabbits, but it’s not enough, she needs more. She goes for another run and doesn’t even wait for nightfall before she’s back at the fringe of the forest. She wakes up later in the dirt and grass, naked and exhausted and unsure of where she is. She stares up at the snippets of blue sky she can see through the leaves and tries and tries and tries to catch her breath. 

She can’t. Her bones snap and reshape themselves again. She bares her teeth. She howls. 

 

 

 

Maia gets fed up with Cordelia halfway through the novel and throws it across the room; thanks to her supernatural strength, the force of it dents the drywall. It feels like she’s getting worse instead of better. She keeps trying to escape this feeling inside her but it’s growing roots. She’s hyped up all the time from working out and wolfing out, anger wreaking havoc on her body. When she turned the night before she twisted her ankle, joint shifting the wrong way in her eagerness to go from human to animal. Now she can’t run. She’s grounded like a sparrow with a thorn in its wing. It’s like something out of a fairytale, trapped between maiden and wolf, unable to get free.

Maia would do anything to burn the tension out. She masturbates impatiently, thinking of Simon’s mouth between her thighs, how he smiles against her skin. He has given her the time she asked for, but there are still four texts on her phone, one for every day she’s been gone. _Just checking in. Call if you need to. How are you doing? I just want to know you’re okay_.

Her fingers slip into where she is wet and wanting. But thinking about Simon reminds her that she’d laid down with him in the apartment he shares with Jordan and she has to stop, hand curling into a fist. She hadn’t even smelled him. Had it been so long that she’d forgotten what Jordan smelled like? It fills her nostrils now, sense memory: brine and aftershave and sweet shampoo. Mango. She used to tease him about that. She still can’t eat mangos. 

Maia shakes him from her head and turns onto her stomach, pushing one of the motel pillows between her legs and hoping it doesn’t give her an STD. The first time she slept with Simon had been at the boathouse. Strange that somewhere so neglected became so idyllic. They’d been kissing against the door when Simon hoisted her up in his arms to carry her to the bed, tipping her onto its unmade surface but not pulling away. Maia had been eager for him, scrabbling for his belt as soon as she’d dragged his shirt over his head. But Simon paused, this intent look on his face. She was still mostly dressed, her top rucked up over her stomach and lace of her bra half-exposed. But he wasn’t looking at any of her bare skin. He was studying her face with a kind of naked longing she didn’t quite recognize on him. She almost wanted to ask who he was looking at.

Then Simon leaned down, shifting over her so their bodies aligned, her legs draped casually around her hips. He kissed her neck. He said, “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

Which was kind of crazy, because it had only been a few weeks since they’d met. Still, the words made her heart clench in her chest like a fist. All she could think was: you’re going to hurt me. She knew it with absolute certainty. But she just kissed him and rolled him onto his back, peeled off her shirt and gave in to his terrible sweetness.

She saw that same longing in his face every time he tried to bring up Jordan. Simon wanted to be close to her, but every step he took made Maia want to turn tail and run. She’d had this instant feeling about Simon when they met, this knowledge that they would click so well if everything worked out just right. If he stopped being in love with another girl. If Maia could reach out to him without snatching her hands back in the same breath. If Maia could trust. But someone had taken all her trust away

After all that sugar, there always comes an ache.

 

 

 

Maia gets into a bar fight. It’s not her finest moment.

There isn’t much to do around here, which is the point, but Maia can only fuck and fight and frolic so much. The ankle is improving but it’s not totally there yet. She’s starting to think it’s psychosomatic because normally injuries don’t linger for longer than a couple of hours with her. She’s too wrung out to heal, maybe. She’s Mr. Fantastic, she’s Gumby. She’s been kneaded and twisted like dough for five days and nothing can fix her. That feeling inside her. That knot. Jordan.

She employs Google to find the nearest bar and hitches there since it’s not walkable for a wolf with a bum paw. It’s a sports bar, which is depressing, but beggars can’t be choosers. Maia opens a tab, opens a bottle, and dives in. 

She does shots of straight vodka until all the lights leave vaseline smudges on her vision. She gets wasted. She offers the bartender tips from her stool since he’s obviously not doing anything right, her words slurring together until they sound more like a hum than a sentence. Some barfly with a sunken face and fried hair takes offense to this and starts something with her, so Maia starts something back. The woman’s daughter gets up in her face and, well. Punches are thrown. Adrenaline burns. Maia laughs when pain explodes in her cheekbone and licks blood from her split lip. She thinks of Simon, fleetingly. 

Maia was never one to go down easy.

It was the bane of her parents’ existence that the school year couldn’t end without Maia getting into a scuffle. Unlike perfect Daniel, Maia had trouble keeping her short fuse a secret, though it used to take people by surprise anyway. Who knew Maia with her boho-chic sundresses and classic novels was also the girl who pulled hair and wasn’t afraid to scratch? She was scrappy, she fought dirty, and it wasn’t until her sophomore year of high school that she found a way to get a handle on it. That was when she started thinking about college, about getting the hell out of New Jersey. Now she can always find a reason to fight.

The bartender calls the cops once the brawl spills out onto the hard-packed dirt of the parking lot. Maia knocks the girl back into the presumably loving arms of her string-bean, strung-out boyfriend before she books it. She ducks behind a dumpster and transforms, leaves shreds of her clothing behind and races back to the motel on four legs. She cannot feel hurt. All she feels is hurt.

 

 

 

Maia brought one of Simon’s shirts with her, Rock Solid Panda emblazoned on the front and fabric smelling like him — cookies, night wind, grave dirt. It’s earthy, reminds her of nights spent out under the moon. She likes it. It’s indescribable, the comfort she gets from breathing him in. 

She folds herself into the space between the window and the nightstand, carpet itchy under her bare legs. She twists the blinds open and shut with the phone pressed hot against her ear. Light spills across her face and is abruptly choked off by darkness. It’s four in the morning. Perks of a vampire boyfriend: he’s almost always up.

But he does sound a little sleepy, a little sweet. “I miss you,” he says emphatically, before he says hello or tells her what new danger Clary is facing. Simon doesn’t always get his timing right but at that moment that is exactly what Maia wants to hear.

She doesn’t say it back. She means to, but what comes out is, “He’s good at being good at first. He’s good at being charming and fun and funny.”

They both know who she’s talking about.

“But it breaks down. I was — I’ve been thinking about this a lot. And it wasn’t just the wolf, you know. I remember when he got scratched, though I didn’t know what it meant at the time. Even before that — Look.” Maia takes a breath. “You live with him. You get it. He’s easy to fall in love with. But then it takes this turn, he’s like — You get swept up so it’s hard to see until it’s too late. Speeches, big gestures? He’s got ‘em down. And he’s so good at making you see his side. He used to make all these big desperate plans, stuff that didn’t make any sense but he believed in so intensely that it made you want to believe, too. When you didn’t, he’d get so wounded. But my stuff, you know, my dreams? My real stuff? What did that matter when he had _plans_ , right?”

Her throat constricts, but she continues, “He used to do this thing, I always… These little digs. They were hard to even pinpoint as _digs_ , because he’d say them with a laugh and that smile. Picking at me but making it a joke so I couldn’t get mad. He never cared about what I was reading. Is that stupid?”

“No,” Simon says. “None of it is stupid.”

Now that she’s started, she can’t stop. It spills. It pours. “He used to get so mad at me. He never — He never touched me or anything, not until that night, but the smallest thing could make him furious. He would just scream at me for making some tiny mistake that I didn’t even _know_ was a mistake until I made it. When I would call him to apologize — to _apologize_ — he wouldn’t pick up, he’d just let me twist, agonized, until he decided to talk to me again. But if I didn’t pick up —”

She blows out a breath. “He wanted to know where I was and who I was with all the time. I had this ex — like a dumb middle school boyfriend, but we stayed friends. His name was Mark. Jordan saw us talking once.” She almost laughs. “In the parking lot of the DQ. And he lost it. He said I was _smiling_ at Mark too much. He could tell Mark was checking me out. He hated that Mark was going to Princeton. Jordan never even finished high school, he was really insecure about it. He hated when I would blow him off so I could study or do my homework. He sulked when I talked about college.” She pauses. “This was before the scratches.”

Maia swallows hard, angry, her mouth dry and throat aching from saying so much. “But, see, he’d always find a way to turn it around. You know? He’d pick daisies for me. He’d tap on my window at midnight so we could sneak out and drive somewhere to look at the stars. He’d tell me he’d never felt like this about any other girl. No one understood him like I did. So I let the other stuff go. Do you get it? Learning demon languages. Going on his redemption tour. It’s the same thing. He makes it impossible for you to hate him.”

Simon is quiet for a moment. He’s been quiet this whole time. Then he says, very softly, “Why did you make him stay?”

Maia presses her lips together and digs her nails into the short pile of the carpet, wishing it was dirt and grass. “Did you ever put your finger in a candle flame just to see if it would hurt, even though you knew it would?”

“I — no,” Simon says honestly. She expected that. “You wanted to test yourself?”

“Or test him,” she says. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I couldn’t handle it.”

“You don’t have to handle it,” Simon says, urgent. No, not urgent. Fierce. “I don’t care about this Praetor bullshit, Maia. I care about you. Fuck him. Seriously. Fuck. Him.” 

The thing that makes Maia the angriest is how much her behavior has been a reaction to Jordan since she was seventeen years old. He ripped her life apart and then walked right out of it, leaving Maia to carefully pick the shards up off the floor. She had to figure out how to get over it. She had to remake herself into a different person, a girl who was not bleeding and crying on the sidewalk because her ex-boyfriend tore her throat open. She had to promise herself that it would never happen again and then follow through on that promise, trading in meaningless boys for more meaningless boys and never letting anyone close. Guarding herself against affection. Being terrified of what she felt for Simon, this tight little bud of feeling that could be crushed as soon as it bloomed. Betraying herself by running away from him. Jordan managed to control her without getting anywhere near her. When would he let her go?

Even Simon — there were things about him that kind of reminded her of Jordan, sometimes. Nice things that could be easily tainted: a boy who loved video games, a boy who was easy with encouragement, a boy with a sunny smile.

“I just want to hate him,” she breathes. It’s strange, but she almost feels calm now, or at the very least cleaned out until she was empty. Not in a bad way. It’s like puking when you’ve had so much to drink that you’re too nauseated to stand. You just have to get the poison part out. “I miss you too.”

She doesn’t know where to go from here. She’s felt so disconnected from Simon lately and she’s not sure if it’s him or her. 

“You seem so pure to me, sometimes,” she admits quietly, head tipped back against the wall. Blinds dappling her face with fluorescent light and leaving her in shadows. “Like you don’t have scars.”

Simon says, “Well, I don’t want people to think I do.”

That changes something, almost instantly, about how she thinks of him. That mark on his forehead blazes and then vanishes, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there all the time. The thing about Simon is that even when he buckles, he picks himself back up again. 

“When are you coming home?” 

Maia likes that he phrased it that way. Home. “Soon,” she says. “Before you know it.”

“What do you want me to do?” he says, hesitant. “Should I — Do you want me to do anything?”

The blinds open. The moon is a waxing gibbous, fat and full. Soon it will be a perfect disc, an eerie pupil. “Just be there,” Maia says. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Simon asks, “Where would I go?”


End file.
